At her worst, well, Tina Packer directs Macbeth. Her
current production is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy informed
by the film Moulin Rouge. All that’s missing here is
Lady Macbeth swinging in wearing a red dress, singing “Daggers
Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” There will be moments to please
almost any individual, but, as a whole, this Macbeth
will please no one and mean nothing. This overwrought mess
makes clear that if a too-metaphorical, -symbolic or -expressionistic
approach is applied to Macbeth, the result is too literally
“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.”

But there are plenty of moments to please:

For those who revere previous Bare Bard productions, the opening,
where the eight actors step forward, introduce themselves
directly to the audience and reveal each character played,
will please. Judith McSpadden (Ross, Fleance, Secret Service
Agent, Spirit from the Other World, Cream-faced Loon, Young
Siward) was particularly impressive as the Cream-faced Loon.

For fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there’s the moment
when the two assassins (Jason Asprey, Henry David Clarke)
crawl across the stage like dogs, then curl around Macbeth
(Dan McCleary) as he taunts them into killing Banquo (Johnny
Lee Davenport). The two assassins sniff, lick, howl and cringe,
literally like the canines used metaphorically in Macbeth’s
monologue, then morph into humans when Macbeth gives them
officers’ caps.

For literalists, the costuming and sound design bring this
Macbeth up to date with combat fatigues in different
shades of green, black jungle boots, three-piece gray business
suits, evening wear, AK-47s, pistols, tank fire, helicopters,
and speeches by past and present world leaders (used in the
set piece where Banquo’s ghost presents his lineage as the
future kings of England). These give this Macbeth a
G.I. Joe-gone-wild cartoon feel, but as Lady Macbeth
(Carolyn Roberts) comes across as a Barbie playing with a
stuffed doll, it’s appropriate. If you couldn’t make the connection
between Macbeth and the politics of today, Shakespeare
& Company take a hammer and make the connection for you.

For those fans of Adam Sandler/Chris Kattan, there’s a half-hour
improv around the drunken porter at hell’s gate (Michael Hammond)
that brings the production to a screeching halt. Hammond brings
what’s left of the house down, ad libbing, “That’s the nice
thing about Elizabethan literature: You have no idea what
you’re talking about.” The Bare Bard productions used to be
about making Elizabethan literature springwater clear.

Finally, for those who like Buckaroo Bonzai, techno
dancing, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Chico Marx,
and the smug pretentiousness of performance art, there’s the
prophecy scene, where the witches are replaced by mad scientists
in white lab coats, the cauldron by animal cages, beakers
and tubes, and the verse by tin-eared Italian, German, or
Jamaican accents. Having managed to make it through the scene
without cracking a smile, the cast is rewarded with having
to strip off their lab coats, revealing their lycra dance
wear, and bumping and grinding to some anonymous techno beat.

For those who don’t think post-Sept. 11 theater needs a WTC
homage with red foam noses and squirting flowers, and for
those who long for a Bare Bard that isn’t barely Bard, there’s
always next season.

Amateur
Orchard

The
Apple Tree Music
by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, book by Harnick
and Bock, directed by Carleton Carpenter

Oldcastle Theatre Co., Bennington Center
for the Arts, Bennington, Vt., through July 20

Oldcastle Theatre Company’s production of The Apple Tree—based
on three stories by Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton and Jules
Feiffer—arrives worm-eaten in a production marked by an amateurishness
that shouldn’t be tolerated on a school stage, let alone that
of a “professional” company that is celebrating, in its own
words, “30 Years of Excellence.”

The trouble begins with the work itself. Harnick and Bock
have provided no viable reason to dramatize their worthy source
material, and the forgettable, regrettable and lamentable
music and lyrics they’ve concocted add nothing to their mundane
vegetable of a book. The songs do, however, prolong the agony
of discriminating theater patrons, who expect more from the
team that produced Fiddler on a Roof and the even-better
She Loves Me, a show that could work well on the stage
at the Bennington Center for the Arts. The link among the
three stories (Twain’s The Diary of Adam and Eve, Stockton’s
The Lady or the Tiger and Feiffer’s Passionella)
is, supposedly, the battle of the sexes. It only comes across,
however, as a very minor skirmish.

The show’s inherent weaknesses are exacerbated by Carleton
Carpenter’s limp direction, which is hobbled by serious miscasting
of the two actors who are meant to lend further cohesiveness
by playing the romantic leads in each play. As Adam and Eve,
Princess Barbara and Captain Sanjar, and Passionella and Flip,
actors Mark Irish and Pamela Blair have no chemistry. With
no fire, no heat, and not even a flinty spark, they may as
well be appearing in separate plays.

Something of a nonentity, Irish indicates more than inhabits
and tries too hard to play the foul preciosity of the material
or, worse, himself. It is the sort of playing cute that one
associates with children’s theater. Far worse is Blair, whose
roles are much larger and whose presence comes to dominate
the evening. She is all right when she is speaking, as Eve,
but her singing ranges from inadequate to grating. At first,
one is irked at not being able to hear her (and this, a mere
four rows from the stage); later, one realizes that was something
of a blessing.

The travesty is that the production contains an actress who
could have played Blair’s roles and triumphed over the material’s
shortcomings, or at least distracted us from them. Instead,
Kerri Lynn Jennings, an absolute smash in OTC’s Company,
is used only in tiny parts and as a member of the chorus.
In her briefest moments, she shows talent, a lovely vocal
range and projection, and that ineffable stage presence that
makes us want to watch her even in throwaway moments.

The scenery is serviceable, but the palm trees become a visual
distraction and the clunky turntable an aural one. The unforgivable
happens again at OTC as inexperienced, I hope, stagehands
distractingly dismantle a set upstage during a scene, and
walk off a large piece of scenery as if they are doing act
one of The Skin of Our Teeth. It’s even more embarrassing
because this is under the direction of an Equity stage manager.
The final foul flourish comes courtesy of two young people
cutting their stage-crew teeth as they vainly attempt to push
a sofa offstage as the lights come up for the curtain call.
The Seat of Our Pants would be an apt title for this
operation.

Pretty and pleasing, romantic and sentimental, Barrington
Stage Company’s South Pacific is a fitting—if unchallenging—production
to celebrate Richard Rodgers’ 100th birthday (June 28). It’s
crisply performed, and a simple two-piano accompaniment keeps
the focus squarely on the performers. This musical chestnut,
about the turning of the tide in the Pacific Theater in 1942,
engages because of its classic tunes. Songs like “Some Enchanted
Evening,” “There is Nothing Like a Dame,” “Bali Ha’i” and
“I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out-a My Hair” transcend clichés
and the many commercial uses and connect-the-dots amateur
productions of the musical’s 53-year history. (What may have
been daring in this “Greatest Generation” show, the amorous
interracial relationships, now serve as markers that the term
“greatest” always has an asterisk by it.) BSC’s South Pacific
sails along with a trim two-and-a-half hour running time,
and the production has the look of a watercolor, with set
and lighting design that convincingly evoke an airy and sunlit
South Seas island.

Unfortunately, what’s missing at BSC are the tactile brushstrokes
that give life to sight and sound. This is like seeing a reproduction
of a painting, not the thing itself. The notes are hit, the
dance moves are made, the lights shift and the scenery changes,
but the sensations are MIA. A musical about the magic and
misery of forbidden love has to give a hint of why it’s forbidden,
not banish it from the play before it begins.

The story centers on exiled French planter Emile de Beque
(dashingly played by Peter Samuel) who woos the Arkansas nurse
Nellie Forbush (winsomely played by Christianne Tisdale).
That Emile is older, richer and more cultured than Nellie
presents no problems; his half-Polynesian children do, however,
and racism raises its ugly head in paradise during one enchanted
evening.

Couple this with the secondary love story, between the straitlaced
Philadelphian, Lt. Joe Cable (played with icy blue-bloodedness
by Ayal Miodovnik), and the naive Liat (Elaine Marcos, who
gives suggestions that there’s more to Liat than the mere
shadow onstage opposite Miodovnik), and South Pacific
should snap to attention and lay bare the racism the keeps
the white Americans from the loves of their lives.

That only the comic characters—the small-time capitalists,
seaman Luther Billis (fully realized by Christopher Vettel)
and Bali Ha’i matriarch Bloody Mary (Gail Nelson, who desires
to be the headliner)—are played with big-time emotions underscores
the taming of this South Pacific.